National Portrait Gallery (London)

The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in
St Martin's Place, London, is one of the top art
museums in Europe devoted exclusively to portrait
art, and contains works in a variety of different media. Opened to
the public in 1856, it moved to its current site next to the National
Gallery around the corner from Trafalgar Square, in 1896. The enormous
collection of the National Portrait Gallery contains more than 200,000
portraits of historically important and famous British people, together
with more than 250,000 original photographic images. There are typically
about 1,400 portraits on display at any one time. Although portraiture
is selected on the basis of the importance of the sitter, not that of
the artist or the materials used, the collection contains works by many
of the world's best portrait artists
and the the best
English painters. Portraitists include the greatest Old
Masters and the top modern artists,
as well as the most avant-garde postmodernist
artists, of all nationalities. In addition to its headquarters at
St Martin's Place, the National Portrait Gallery also has three regional
centres at Beningbrough Hall (York), Bodelwyddan Castle (Denbighshire,
North Wales) and Montacute House (Yeovil, Somerset). Note that the NPG
(London) has no connection with the Scottish National Portrait Gallery
in Edinburgh. The NPG receives just over 2 million visitors per year and
is sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Other important
art centres in the UK include the British
Museum, the Tate Gallery (London, Liverpool,
St Ives), the Courtauld Gallery (London),
the Victoria & Albert Museum
(London), and the British Royal
Art Collection (various locations). Among the best
galleries of contemporary art is the Saatchi
Gallery (London).

History

The NPG commemorates its three principal
founders with three portrait
busts over the main entrance. They include Philip Henry Stanhope,
5th Earl Stanhope, together with his two supporters, Thomas Macaulay,
and Thomas Carlyle. Following three parliamentary attempts by Stanhope
(1846-56) proposing the idea of a National Portrait Gallery, it was finally
accepted and duly approved by Queen Victoria in 1856. A sum of £2000
was set aside by parliament to set up the gallery, whose establishment
was also overseen by Benjamin Disraeli and by Lord Ellesmere, who donated
the first work to the NPG - the Chandos portrait of William Shakespeare
(1600-1610).

For the first 40 years of its life, the
gallery occupied a series of locations in London, including 29 Great George
Street, Westminster; Exhibition Road; Bethnal Green Museum; before finally
taking up residence in a new building in St Martin's Place, designed by
Ewan Christian. Since then the gallery has been extended twice. A new
wing, financed by Lord Duveen, was added in 1933, and a second wing financed
by Sir Christopher Ondaatje and the Heritage Lottery Fund was opening
in 2000.

Galleries

The National Portrait Gallery is divided
into the following displays:

Tudor and Elizabethan Galleries
(1485-1603)
Featuring late Renaissance
portraits from the era of Henry VIII, Mary Queen of Scots, Elizabeth
I and William Shakespeare.

Stuart and Civil War Galleries (1603-1714)
Cover the Stuart period, punctuated by the English Civil War, Commonwealth
and Protectorate and the Restoration period.

Georgian Galleries (1714-1800)
Featuring Rococo
& Neoclassical Portraits from the Hanoverian age during the reigns
of King George I, King George II and King George III.

Weldon Galleries (1795-1837)
Contain portraiture from the extended Regency period under King George
IV and afterwards, up to the death of King William IV in 1837.

Victorian and Edwardian Galleries
(1837-1910)
Lined by magnificent portrait busts this area features 19th
century portraits created during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901)
and the reign of King Edward VII to 1910.

20th Century Galleries (1914-90)
Contain works by 20th
century portrait artists from the onset of the First World War until
the end of the 1980s.

The National Portrait Gallery was established
on the basis that its collection was to be about "history",
rather than the "art", and
about the identity and status of the sitter, not the quality or type of
image produced. This criterion is still used when deciding which works
should or should not be included in the National Portrait Gallery's collection.
In addition, at the beginning, it was agreed by the gallery's Trustees
that "No portrait of any person still living, or deceased less that
10 years" should be acquired, except in the case of the reigning
Sovereign. This rule was relaxed in 1969 in order to permit the admission
of living sitters. In addition to its collections of historical portraits,
the NPG showcases a rapidly changing selection of contemporary
art, organizes exhibitions of portraiture by individual artists and
hosts the annual BP Portrait Prize competition.

Although as you might expect, painting
and drawing are the two main types of art
in the NPG, the primary collection also includes a host of works in different
media. They include portraits in acrylics, gouache, grisaille, and watercolour,
along with works drawn in biro, chalk, charcoal, Conté crayon,
ink, pastels, pen and ink, pencil and silverpoint. It includes portrait
prints like etchings, aquatints,
engravings, lithographs, silk-screen
prints and woodcuts, as well
as portraits made with contemporary media including assemblage,
papier-mâché, cardboard and stencils. Its sculpture portraits
include works in bronze, clay, enamel,
terracotta, plaster, marble,
wax and wood. There are also numerous examples of miniature
painting, cartoons, and caricature
art, as well as mosaics.

The oldest work is an oil
painting of King Henry VII, dated 1505, by an unknown Netherlandish
artist. The smallest is a miniature portrait (the size of a thumbnail)
of Henrietta Anne, Duchess of Orleans, thought to be by Jean Petitot,
possibly after Pierre Mignard, which dates to the 17th century. The largest
work is a portrait by John
Singer Sargent, entitled General Officers of World War I (1922),
which measures some 5.3 metres in width.

In addition, there is a significant collection
of portrait photography, including some 130,000 original negatives.